Iran’s foreign minister arrived in Oman on Saturday to discuss arrangements for the safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian state media said, with Washington seeking a public pledge of free, secure transit.
US president Donald Trump said on Friday the US and Iran had agreed to continue talks despite an escalation of hostilities this week, while also declaring an end to the ceasefire reached between the two sides. No attacks were reported on Friday or early Saturday, however.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said on Saturday that foreign minister Abbas Araqchi had arrived in Oman. The country is helping to mediate an end to a war that has spread insecurity in the Gulf and raised prices around the world since the US and Israel launched air strikes on Iran on February 28th.
US vice-president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were expected to lead negotiations on Saturday with Araqchi.
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Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said on Saturday that avenging his slain predecessor and father was “the demand of the nation” and “must certainly” take place, according to a written message released on his Telegram account.
Khamenei issued the message on the occasion of funeral ceremonies for his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held months after he was killed in the US-Israeli air strikes on February 28th.
Trump threatened Iran after calls for his killing at the funeral of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He made the comments on Truth Social after senior US officials demanded that Iran make a public statement saying the Strait of Hormuz is open and that ships crossing the vital corridor will not be attacked any longer.
Tehran said the route remained under its control and that it is allowed to charge ships moving through it, upending decades of precedence considering the strait an international waterway.
A thousand “missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat”, Trump wrote in his post.
The US president said his comments followed threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him.
During Khamenei’s funeral, mourners held posters or banners calling for him to be killed, along with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
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Trump added in his post that the US military would “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran – PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”
He has repeatedly, during the war and its uneasy ceasefire, invoked the name of God in Arabic, and threatened to destroy Iran’s very civilisation.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nationwide advocacy group, in the past has criticised Trump’s “deranged mocking of Islam”.
Iran’s grip on the strait during the conflict has led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of $120 a barrel.
The US continues to urge mariners to travel on a southern route through Oman’s territorial waters to avoid Iranian waters and the commands of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
That has angered Tehran and sparked the attacks in the strait. – additional reporting, Reuters
